Unmanned vehicles such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be used for performing surveillance, reconnaissance, and exploration tasks for a wide variety of civilian, commercial, and military applications. A UAV may be manually controlled by a remote user, or may operate in a semi-autonomous or fully autonomous manner. Such UAVs can include a carrier used to support payloads such as cameras for obtaining image data of a target object.
Prior approaches for controlling a payload carried by a UAV may not be optimal in some instances. For instance, prior methods for stabilizing a payload may not be adapted to compensate for external disturbances to the carrier and payload and may not account for the specific mechanical characteristics of the carrier, which may reduce the accuracy of control of the payload.